


Happy Turnips

by fuzzytomato



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-26
Updated: 2012-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzytomato/pseuds/fuzzytomato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hunith always knew her boy was special. ~2k of Hunith POV about raising a precocious warlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Turnips

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the merlin_ficart challenge. This fic is written for waltzing_mice's absolutely lovely drawing "Not Here, Merlin!" aka Happy Turnips found here - http://waltzing-mice.livejournal.com/34936.html  
> Thanks to eldee for the beta. :)

Hunith always knew her boy was special. 

Then again, most mothers think their children are, that they hang the stars and are blessed by the moon. Hunith had spent several seasons listening to the mothers of the village discuss how their children were hearty, nimble, strong and everything else a farmer’s wife would want in her brood. She always smiled and nodded, kept her opinions to herself because she didn’t quite understand it. 

Until she had Merlin. 

Being a bastard, the son of a man wanted by a king, wasn’t a very auspicious beginning, but Hunith could see the sun in his toothless smile and could hear fairy songs in his laugh. 

He was perfect, from his pink chubby cheeks to his curly dark hair, all the way down to his tiny toes.

She loved him, from the moment she clapped eyes on him, and she hugged him to her chest, crying, while the midwife told her that she would never be able to raise him alone and that they’d both die in the first winter. 

Hunith knew of the whispers, heard them from the side of the villagers’ mouths as she passed, Merlin clutched in one arm, as she continued to attempt to provide for them both. 

Their opinions didn’t matter. 

Merlin was _her_ son, her responsibility, her reason for living and she’d die before she allowed anyone to convince her otherwise. 

-

And then one day, after that hard first winter, Hunith was singing to him while she baked bread and he sat on the floor at her feet. She danced around him, kneading dough, shaping loaves, talking and humming as he gurgled and played with her old doll and a wooden toy horse her friend Annabelle had given him. 

When he started to fuss, Hunith looked down to see the toy had somehow got away from him. She was covered in flour up to her elbows and could not stop to comfort him and it pained her to hear him cry. She tried to soothe him with words and was proud of her mothering skills when he quieted. 

She looked down to smile at him, and gasped, shocked, as she watched the horse skitter across the floor and her baby’s eyes flared gold. 

He giggled and clapped his little hands. 

It came to rest in front of him where he promptly picked it up and put it into his mouth. 

Hunith staggered backward, hand clasped over her mouth, uncaring that dough was smearing all over her face and flour was falling in white puffs around her. She fell onto the bench and watched as her Merlin did _magic_. 

She panicked at first, frantically looked around the room, made sure the door was closed, the latch heavy across the frame. She picked him up, hands under his arms, and looked him over, turning him from side to side to make sure he was her Merlin and not some foundling, some pixie child that had taken his place in the night. 

Merlin smiled at her around the toy still firmly in his mouth and batted at her nose, his fingers sliding through the remnants of dough on her cheek. He giggled and Hunith smiled, panic melting into wonder, knowing that this was indeed her child and that he could do _magic_. 

It seemed her son actually _could_ hang the stars and play with the moon, if he so wanted. 

Hunith held him close, spun him around, and they both laughed. 

-

“Merlin! Not here!” Hunith scolded as she walked down the dirt path to their home from their visit with Annabelle and her son, William. 

Merlin walked beside her, bare feet kicking up small clouds of dust as he skipped, turnips flipping in the air at his fingertips. 

She would’ve giggled with delight if it wasn’t so dangerous out in the open as they were. She quickly looked around and was relieved to find that no one was near enough to see. 

“Mum,” Merlin whined. “It was fun!”

She smiled indulgently. 

“There will be a time and a place Merlin. I promise you.”

He frowned. “But Mum, when?”

He was six and his magic was flowing out of him at every chance. He was growing more powerful and Hunith could see how he struggled to control it. 

It rained when he cried over being teased by the other children. 

When he played in the garden, the vegetables grew twice their normal size. 

Toy horses walked. Winter fires needed little fuel. Her broom swept of its own accord. 

And turnips danced. 

“You’ll know it, Merlin. When the time is right.”

-  
Hunith wiped the blood from Merlin’s face carefully. He had come home, walking awkwardly, trying to hide a limp and a bloodied nose and bruises. 

“Oh Merlin,” she said, pulling him into her arms, her heart aching for him. 

He was almost taller than her now but still only a boy. 

“It’s nothing,” he sniffed, ever trying to be her brave son. 

“Come here.” She made him sit on the low bench by the table while she dabbed at his split lip. 

“I could’ve whipped them all,” he said sullenly. “My magic is stronger than them. I could’ve _hurt_ them.”

“But you wouldn’t.”

“I could’ve.”

“But you wouldn’t. I know my son, and he is more noble and more kind-hearted than some village bullies.”

Merlin wiped at his eyes with the back of his sleeve, hiding the tears that had gathered there. He took a deep breath and then gave her a soft smile. 

Hunith pulled her son into a hug and kissed the top of his head. He didn’t say anything, didn’t have to, she felt it the clutch of his hands in the fabric of her dress. 

“I know, my dear,” she said gently. “I know.”

-

Merlin slipped through the door, pail of fresh water in one hand, a basket of eggs in the other. He set the pail by the fire to warm and carefully placed the eggs on the table without looking up and without speaking.

Hunith glanced up from her sewing, from letting out the hem of a pair breeches because Merlin wouldn’t stop growing, and watched with sharp eyes as her son shuffled about the room. She had noticed that Merlin had grown quieter over the past few weeks but even at his most sullen, he would still give her a soft smile. 

She took a breath to ease the rising concern. 

“What’s wrong, love?”

Merlin stood in front of her, hands clasped behind his back, eyes darting around the room before his gaze settled on the sparking fire. 

“Will knows,” he said. 

“What? How could you, Merlin? He could tell, he could…”

“He won’t.”

Hunith stood, dropping the sewing into the floor. “How could you be so reckless?”

Merlin looked away. He was taller than her now, lean and strong from work. She could see his father in the stubborn set of his jaw and the black of his hair. 

“I’m tired of keeping it a secret. I’m tired of being alone!”

“Merlin,” she said, wilting, “there will be a time and a place…”

“I’m tired of waiting!”

“Merlin!”

He finally looked at her, his blue eyes stormy, gold swirling in their depths. “I’m not a child anymore. I shouldn’t have to hide.”

“I know that you must feel…”

“You don’t know!” Merlin shouted. “I just wanted one friend, Mum. One friend that looks at me and sees the real me, not the bumbling idiot that everyone else does.”

“Oh, Merlin. You can’t let those people dictate your decisions.”

“You do,” he countered. “You let them sneer at us and treat us like we are less than them when we’re not.”

Hunith bit her lip. “I didn’t want to draw attention to you and your gifts. It’s dangerous, Merlin. I did what I thought was best.”

“I’m an adult now,” Merlin answered. “It’s time I am allowed to make my own decisions.”

He turned on his heel, walked out of their small house with a determined stride, the door slamming behind him on its own accord. 

-

She sent him away.

Merlin was right. He was an adult and he had been given his powers for a reason. It wasn’t his destiny to waste away in the village. 

So she wrote to her uncle. 

There wasn’t a day she didn’t question her decision, a day that didn’t pass in which she hoped to see him step through the front door with one of his wide mischievous grins. 

She received letters but she knew that Merlin omitted the things he didn’t want her to know.

Merlin became the personal servant to the prince, the son of a man that would see her only child dead for the magic that ran through his veins.

He called the prince a prat in his letters but over the months, she began to read between the lines, could see the affection and friendship that was blossoming between her son and this Arthur.

The day she received the letter from Gaius relating how Merlin bravely drank a goblet of poison to save him, she cried herself to sleep.

-

Hunith met Merlin’s Arthur and understood.

He was a great leader and under his brusque exterior, Hunith could see his kind heart. She also saw the looks he gave her son, looks that spoke of a deep warmth and fondness.

But he was scared of magic and Will died protecting Merlin. 

Hunith had pulled Merlin aside, hugged him, kissed his forehead. “Keep it hidden,” she whispered. 

Merlin wilted against her, sighed as he looked across the field at Arthur, Lady Morgana and Gwen waiting for him. 

“There will be a time and a place, Merlin. I promise.”

Merlin nodded. 

“I know.”

-

Years trickled by, slow like treacle. Merlin’s letters kept coming but they were sparse and terse. The words he didn’t say spoke of a demanding schedule and even more adventures which left him weary. 

The letters from Gaius painted a picture of Merlin working harder than he ever did at home and emotional stressors that Hunith had never expected or wanted for her son. 

Her life kept going. She worked and farmed and cooked. She survived, day after day, and heard of the world changing around her. 

Arthur was king. 

Arthur took a queen. 

Arthur conquered Escetia. 

Arthur was uniting Albion. 

But in all the gossip, there was no word of Merlin.

She distracted herself from her apprehension with baking and farming and watching the new village babies while their mothers tended their homes. 

-

Hunith knew things had changed when Merlin’s letter did not come from a messenger but appeared on her table in a crackle of magic. 

A few days later, a royal escort arrived at her door. 

The trip to Camelot was much less taxing than the previous times she had been. She was given a tent for sleeping and ate the best meals and was accompanied by a grinning knight named Gwaine. 

“Only the best for the Court Sorcerer’s mother,” he said over the fire at night. He winked at her. “That’s why they sent me.”

She laughed, loud and long, and the knot in her chest that had been there since Merlin magicked a wooden horse at her feet eased, dissipated into the night. 

Upon their arrival, Gwaine led her into the Great Hall. The King and Queen were seated on their thrones in all their majesty. 

Hunith wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes as she saw Merlin standing next to Arthur, dressed in rich fabrics, silk and ermine, a long staff in the gentle curl of his hand. She saw the look exchanged between them, the warm twist of the King’s lips at his sorcerer and the telling grin and roll of Merlin’s eyes in return. 

Merlin was loved here, in Camelot, cherished by a king, respected by knights, revered by Druids, beloved by people. 

She stood in the back of the crowd, watching with wide eyes, as Merlin opened his hand, a ball of light and flame held within. He tossed it into the air and it burst over the crowd in a flurry of sparkles. The crowd clapped in delight at the display and when the King laughed, shot Merlin a fond glance, Hunith knew Merlin had found his time and place. 

And she was happy.


End file.
